Drilling operations often produce undesirable byproducts which must be treated or stored in accordance with government regulations. The oil and gas industry is faced with logistical hurdles for transporting, storing, and treating these undesirable byproducts of drilling operations. Typically, these byproducts or contaminants are transported in reusable portable boxes from the drilling sites to facilities which are capable of processing or otherwise storing the byproducts. After the portable boxes are used for transporting the byproducts, they must be thoroughly cleaned of contaminants before being reused.
For example, drill cuttings (or cuttings) comprise the soil, rock fragments, and pulverized material that are removed from a borehole and that may include an amount of fluid (typically a hydrocarbon) that results from a drilling process. During a typical drilling operation, drill cuttings are produced as the rock (earth) is broken by the drill bit advancing through the rock or soil. As drilling fluid or drilling mud circulates up from the drill bit, the cuttings are carried to the surface.
Drilling mud is used in the drilling process for various reasons, many of which do not lead to the subject of the present disclosure. To name a few, however, drilling mud is used to control subsurface pressures, lubricate the drill bit, stabilize the well bore, and, more pertinently to the present disclosure, carry the cuttings to the surface, among other functions. In practice, mud is pumped from the surface through the hollow drill string, exits through nozzles in the drill bit, and returns to the surface through the annular space between the drill string and the walls of the hole, transporting the cuttings in it. Once the cuttings have reached the surface, they must be separated from the mud so that the mud can be reused. The means of separating the drill cuttings from the drilling mud mixture is well known in the art and is not the subject of the present disclosure.
Once separated from the drilling mud mixture, the cuttings must be handled in compliance with government regulations. The separated cuttings are often transported from the drilling site to designated dumping or processing zones for further treatment or more permanent storage. Cuttings boxes, which are well known in the art, are often employed to transport the cuttings offsite to the designated zone.
At the treatment or disposal sites, the boxes are emptied of the cuttings materials, but remain contaminated by the residue cuttings which linger in the box. The boxes must be cleaned of all remaining contaminants prior to returning to the drill sites to be reused. It is typical practice in the industry for a human operator to at least partially enter into the cuttings box to pressure wash the interior. Such actions are subject to heightened government regulations which the industry participants would prefer to avoid or circumvent if economically feasible.
One object of the present portable container cleaning system and apparatus is to remove the need for a human to enter the cuttings box in order to remove the cuttings contaminants from the container walls, thereby foregoing the heightened government regulations previously discussed. Another object of the present invention is to allow for the rapid cleaning of multiple cuttings boxes in order to reduce the downtime of the cuttings box for reuse. Another object of the present invention is to provide a cleaning system and apparatus with a low footprint so that the system can be placed and operated without requiring a large amount of room on a jobsite or in cleaning facility. Other objects of the present invention include reducing the amount of manpower and time required for the cleaning process and reducing the amount of spray water required for cleaning multiple portable boxes.